🔥 The SEOs Diners Club - Issue #178 - Weekly SEO Tips & News

By Mert Erkal, SEO Strategist & Conversion Expert with 15+ years of experience

The ChatGPT Commerce Revolution: How AI is Rewriting E-commerce SEO

Hello valued readers,

This week brought truly groundbreaking developments in the digital marketing world. Most notably, ChatGPT's integration with Shopify is reshaping the future of e-commerce and SEO as we know it. We'll dive deep into what this transformation means, how you need to prepare, and which opportunities you absolutely cannot afford to miss.

ChatGPT & Shopify Integration: The New Era of E-commerce

The latest developments in the digital world have opened the doors to a fundamental transformation in e-commerce and search engine optimization. One of the most notable steps in this transformation is OpenAI's introduction of shopping search functionality to ChatGPT, particularly through its integration with Shopify. Users can now conduct product searches directly within ChatGPT, receive results enriched with visuals, and even complete their purchases through the chat interface. This marks the beginning of a new era for e-commerce site owners and SEO professionals.

For many years, search engines played a central role in accessing information and products. However, over the past two years, the rise of AI-based large language models has radically transformed this order. LLMs can now understand not just words, but user intent, context, and expectations, generating direct responses. This transformation, which began with Google's SGE (Search Generative Experience), has been taken to a different level with OpenAI's shopping search feature integrated into ChatGPT.

Users no longer need to navigate through multiple links to access information or products; they can reach everything they're looking for within a single AI response. This means the search experience is evolving from being mechanical to becoming personalized and contextual. AI-powered search attempts to understand more than text, interact with users, and provide data-driven direct results, while also making product recommendations and purchase guidance in this process. This requires everyone who wants to understand the future of SEO to know that the issue is no longer just about ranking, but about being part of the answer.

Paradigm Shift in Search Engine Optimization

Since late 2024, search engines have begun transitioning from being merely information access tools to response-focused AI platforms. Thanks to the Shopify integration, ChatGPT has moved beyond being just a question-answer engine to become a product discovery and purchasing tool. This shakes the fundamental foundations of traditional SEO because concepts like clicking, ranking, and even classic SERP (Search Engine Results Page) are giving way to "AI visibility."

Users now ask ChatGPT questions like "recommend waterproof trekking shoes" instead of typing keywords into Google, and they're presented with product cards, images, and "Buy" buttons directly, even completing purchases without visiting any website. While the goal is still searching, determining intent, and generating conversions, this process now takes shape within AI responses.

This change is also transforming the role of SEO professionals. Simply finding keywords, getting backlinks, or writing meta descriptions is no longer sufficient. The new generation SEO specialist must design content to help LLMs generate responses, explain product and category pages not just to users but to AI systems, convert brand information into JSON + structured data + feed API formats, and analyze patterns for prompt matching. This is no longer a ranking game, but a battle for being called upon. The called product is the visible product, and the visible product is the one that generates conversions.

Technical Infrastructure: How ChatGPT Accesses Product Data

The integration between OpenAI and Shopify opened up a completely new layer in the AI-based search experience. Users can conduct product searches directly within ChatGPT, get information through visually enriched product cards, and initiate the purchasing process. However, this system doesn't just work with a background integration; it requires certain technical structures, data flows, and access protocols to be compatible.

In the first half of 2025, Shopify was integrated as ChatGPT's shopping search partner. When users ask ChatGPT questions like "can you recommend a water-resistant baby stroller?", products from Shopify stores can appear directly with product images, price information, rating scores, and "Buy" buttons. This integration makes the product experience part of a conversation and potentially enables conversion rates to be much higher compared to classic SERPs.

Structured Data is critically important. Schema.org based structured data used in Shopify stores is one of the cornerstones of data access for ChatGPT. Particularly, data types like Product, Offer, AggregateRating, and Review enable proper classification of products. These schemas are critically important for ChatGPT to "understand" what a product is, what it does, how users evaluate it, and how much it costs.

Feed APIs come into play secondly. Shopify offers special feed APIs to transfer product information to OpenAI in bulk. Through this system, stock updates, price changes, and edits in product descriptions are transferred to ChatGPT in real-time. This ensures that the recommendations presented to users are always current.

Crawl Permissions and OAI-SearchBot are the third crucial element. ChatGPT only analyzes content it has permission to access. For this purpose, OpenAI uses its crawler called OAI-SearchBot (or GPTBot). For this bot to work, the robots.txt file must have an Allow command for User-agent: oai-searchbot, pages must not have meta robots blocking directives (like noindex), Canonical URLs must be properly defined, and the page must be loadable (no JavaScript render issues).

Beyond Shopify: Opportunities for All E-commerce Platforms

OpenAI's integration with Shopify is often perceived as an advantage exclusive to Shopify stores, but this isn't accurate. ChatGPT can pull products from all sites where data access is possible, not just from Shopify. This requires meeting certain technical and content conditions. This means e-commerce sites not using Shopify infrastructure can also take their place in this new visibility era. Magento, WooCommerce, custom development (custom CMS), or headless commerce platforms can also integrate into this system.

For Technical Infrastructure Preparation, there are three fundamental steps. First, Open Access to OAI-SearchBot: Define the Allow: / command for User-agent: oai-searchbot in your robots.txt file. This allows OpenAI's crawler to access your site. If you don't want your content to be used by AI, you can completely block GPTBot, but this may limit your visibility in AI tools.

Second, Implement Schema.org Standards: You must use schema types like Product, Offer, AggregateRating, and Review completely on your product pages. JSON-LD format is preferred. This structured data is vital for AI to understand your products correctly.

Third, Create Feed API or Sitemap: While OpenAI doesn't directly request a feed endpoint, a JSON/XML endpoint that keeps your products current or a sitemap containing structured data helps the system crawl your site more easily.

Content Strategy: Prompt-Compatible, Direct Answer Structures

Technical infrastructure alone isn't enough to be visible in ChatGPT. The format and expression of your content must be suitable for LLM systems' response generation logic. For example, instead of weak expressions like "This blanket is soft and practical," specific, contextual, and purpose-oriented language should be used, such as "100% organic cotton, breathable, machine-washable baby blanket for newborns." This makes it easier for ChatGPT to present your products as "answers."

Prompt Engineering is one of the new dimensions of LLM SEO. As important as what the user asks is which prompts your content will be called in. As a strategic recommendation, extract "question-formatted" queries from Google Search Console data and rewrite your product descriptions corresponding to these queries. For example, for the query "most suitable shoes for summer," add expressions like "standing out with its breathability in summer..." to the product description. This way, your product can be recommended directly by ChatGPT as the answer to that question.

Algorithm & Search Engine Updates

Google's June 2025 Core Update: Big But Silent Revolution

Google's June 2025 Core Update, completed on July 17th, was a long process lasting 16 days and 18 hours. Behind this update are two important technological developments: MUVERA and Graph Foundation Model.

The MUVERA (Multi-Vector via Fixed Dimensional Encodings) algorithm is revolutionizing the accurate and efficient understanding of web pages. This system achieves the same recall success with 5-20 times fewer candidate pages while reducing memory footprint by 32 times. This means Google can now provide more relevant results by crawling fewer pages.

Graph Foundation Model (GFM) enables Google to better define reliability and authority patterns. This model shows a 3x-40x performance improvement in spam detection and more effectively filters low-quality sites.

Practical Effects:

  • Some sites affected by the Helpful Content Update recovered

  • Quality, expert, and experience-focused content became even more important

  • Despite being a major update, no devastating effects were observed

Instagram-Google Integration: New Opportunities

Starting July 10, 2025, content from professional Instagram accounts became searchable on Google. This is a perfect opportunity to review your digital marketing strategies.

What You Need to Do Immediately:

  1. Convert your Instagram account to a professional account

  2. Use SEO-friendly hashtags and descriptions in your posts

  3. Add your stories to the highlighted stories

  4. Create a regular and quality content-sharing plan

From the AI World

ChatGPT Agent: Automated Task Assistant on the Web

OpenAI's ChatGPT Agent emerges as a system that can interact with web pages and automatically complete tasks. This system combines Operator (web navigation), Deep Research (research), and ChatGPT's natural language capabilities.

What ChatGPT Agent can do is truly impressive: travel planning, competitor analysis, report generation, form filling, meeting planning, and even shopping. This marks the beginning of the "Agentic AI" era.

Critical Point for SEO: Websites being "Agentic AI friendly" is now becoming mandatory. Structured content, labeled form fields, consistent product information, and clear menu structures are essential for AI agents to understand your site correctly.

AI Search Visibility: A New Industry is Born

Startups like Athena and Profound, founded by former Google engineer Andrew Yan, have begun providing services on AI search visibility. These companies focus on increasing brand visibility in AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity.

Important Statistic: According to SEO expert Cyrus Shepard, AI visibility constituted zero percent of his work at the beginning of 2025, while now it constitutes 10-15%. This rate could reach 50% by the end of the year.

Zero-Click Internet Reality: Users now get answers directly from AI interfaces and don't visit the underlying websites. This trend shows that traditional SEO strategies may not be sufficient.

Practical SEO Tips

5-Step Action Plan for AI Visibility

Step 1: Test Your Current Situation. Ask ChatGPT questions about your brand and products. Are you being recommended? How are you being described?

Step 2: Optimize Your Data Structures. Check your structured data with Google Rich Results Test. Complete missing schema types.

Step 3: Rewrite Your Content. Every product description should follow this template: [Feature + benefit-focused description] that accomplishes [purpose] for [target audience]

Step 4: Do Prompt Engineering. Extract "question-formatted" queries from Google Search Console data and optimize your product descriptions corresponding to these queries.

Step 5: Track Your Performance. Regularly check how your brand is represented in AI tools and make necessary corrections.

After Google's "AI Doesn't Kill SEO" Statement

Google's John Mueller stated clearly: "AI chatbots don't replace websites, especially for local search and e-commerce." So what does this mean for us?

Websites Are Still Fundamental: Chatbots provide information based on web content. Without quality, current, and structured content, you won't be visible in AI tools either.

Critical for E-commerce: Mueller's example is very clear: "If you want a t-shirt, you want the link to a store where you can buy it, not an explanation of how to make one."

Action-Oriented Approach: AI automates easy and scalable tasks, but the human factor is still critical for human creativity and marketing ideas.

This Week's Must-Do Actions

  1. Check your robots.txt file — Are you allowing OAI-SearchBot?

  2. Audit schema.org usage on your product pages

  3. Ask ChatGPT questions about your brand — How is it responding?

  4. Convert your Instagram account to a professional account (if you haven't already)

  5. Explore Google Search Console's 24-hour comparison feature

These changes may seem big, but if you progress step by step, you can get ahead of your competitors. Remember: Change is inevitable, adaptation is optional.

Closing & Next Steps

This week, we witnessed truly groundbreaking developments. ChatGPT's Shopify integration marks the beginning of a new era in the e-commerce world. Google's June update and the proliferation of AI-powered search experiences require us to rethink our SEO strategies.

Important Reminders:

  1. AI Visibility is Now Mandatory: Being visible in AI tools alongside traditional SEO has become critical.

  2. Structured Data is Queen: Using Schema.org is essential for being understandable by AI.

  3. Content Strategy is Changing: It's time to transition from keyword-focused approaches to natural language and intent-focused content.

  4. Zero-Click Reality: Even if website traffic decreases, you can gain visibility in AI tools with the right strategies.

What Should Your Next Step Be?

Feeling overwhelmed by the pace of these changes is normal. Getting professional support to update your SEO strategy in the AI era, optimize your technical infrastructure, and gain a competitive advantage can be a smart decision.

As Stradiji, we continue to stand by businesses and SEO professionals during this transformation process. We provide consultancy and mentoring services across a wide range, from ChatGPT optimization to AI visibility strategies, from adapting to Google updates to structured data implementation.

If you need support in these areas, you can contact us through Stradiji.com. Together, we can leverage the opportunities of the AI era.

If you found this newsletter useful, don't forget to share it with the digital marketing professionals around you. Together, we can all adapt to this transformation.

Until next week,

Mert Erkal
Founder, Stradiji - AI-Driven SEO Consultancy

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